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A wealthy and notorious clan, the Bellefleurs live in a region not unlike the Adirondacks, in an enormous mansion on the shores of mythic Lake Noir. They own vast lands and profitable businesses, they employ their neighbors, and they influence the government. A prolific and eccentric group, they include several millionaires, a mass murderer, a spiritual seeker who climbs into the mountains looking for God, a wealthy noctambulist who dies of a chicken scratch. Bellefleur traces the lives of show more several generations of this unusual family. At its center is Gideon Bellefleur and his imperious, somewhat psychic, very beautiful wife, Leah, their three children (one with frightening psychic abilities), and the servants and relatives, living and dead, who inhabit the mansion and its environs. Their story offers a profound look at the world's changeableness, time and eternity, space and soul, pride and physicality versus love. Bellefleur is an allegory of caritas versus cupiditas, love and selflessness versus pride and selfishness. It is a novel of change, baffling complexity, mystery. show lessTags
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(26) What a bizarre and haunting reading experience! This is by no means a perfect book and is not always even enjoyable, truth be told. Sometimes it was downright baffling - but always intriguing, atmospheric, creepy, and thought-provoking. This is a multi-generational family saga about the very rich but very cursed Bellefleur clan - from its patriarch who struck it rich in the 1800's buying up land on the cheap in upstate New York to the present day Bellefleur's still living in the family castle in a fictional county in what I guess would have to be the Adirondacks. The story opens on the young married couple Leah and Gideon who are desperately trying to have a baby and do not conceive until one night a mysterious giant rat thing show more shows up on their doorstep from out of a raging storm. Thus begins, many, many bizarre yet somehow poignant episodes about various members of this crazy clan back and forth throughout the ages.
This novel reminded me of the magical feeling I got when I read "One Hundred Years of Solitude" for the first time as well as "Captain Correlli's Mandolin." Just unforgettable, really. There are so many weird things that will haunt me - like Samuel and the turquoise room; the 'jaws devouring jaws' lines; Jedediah's literal and figurative gut-wrenching experience with illness during his hermit days; the old man who washes in from the flood and marries Elvira; Raphael and the pond; the old man Jean-Pierre's rampage after being released from prison; I could go on and on . . . I mean really, WTF! What a eerie and amazing imagination Oates has.
I simply could not get my mind around the ending but I certainly won't spoil. I wished perhaps for a different sort of deliverance for our protagonists. I will miss reading this huge book each night. It was akin to watching an episode of 'The Twilight Zone' before bed. I have heard this referred to as Gothic --and I'll go with that -- though more of the Southern Gothic grotesque sort of thing than the "Northanger Abbey" Victorian version. It is hard to sum up or describe this book but I would daresay it is a masterpiece and the best of the ~6 ish Joyce Carol Oates' novels I have read.
Highly recommended but I concede not for everyone. For lovers of the modern Gothic as well as magical realism who don't mind a fluid time-line or sprawling messy yet fabulous novels! show less
This novel reminded me of the magical feeling I got when I read "One Hundred Years of Solitude" for the first time as well as "Captain Correlli's Mandolin." Just unforgettable, really. There are so many weird things that will haunt me - like Samuel and the turquoise room; the 'jaws devouring jaws' lines; Jedediah's literal and figurative gut-wrenching experience with illness during his hermit days; the old man who washes in from the flood and marries Elvira; Raphael and the pond; the old man Jean-Pierre's rampage after being released from prison; I could go on and on . . . I mean really, WTF! What a eerie and amazing imagination Oates has.
I simply could not get my mind around the ending but I certainly won't spoil. I wished perhaps for a different sort of deliverance for our protagonists. I will miss reading this huge book each night. It was akin to watching an episode of 'The Twilight Zone' before bed. I have heard this referred to as Gothic --and I'll go with that -- though more of the Southern Gothic grotesque sort of thing than the "Northanger Abbey" Victorian version. It is hard to sum up or describe this book but I would daresay it is a masterpiece and the best of the ~6 ish Joyce Carol Oates' novels I have read.
Highly recommended but I concede not for everyone. For lovers of the modern Gothic as well as magical realism who don't mind a fluid time-line or sprawling messy yet fabulous novels! show less
I should admit, as a kind of full disclosure, that I only picked this one out because Bethanne Patrick, writing in "The Atlantic", included it on a list of "Seven Books the Critics were Wrong About." In this case, the critics were pretty sure of their judgments, with the mighty "Kirkus"calling "Bellefleur"“a great pudding of a book lacking in shape, flavor, and substance.” Oh, ow!
But is it any good? I'm not sure. It's certainly attention-getting and highly readable in places, but it goes on and on for a long, long time. Efficient it isn't. And while it does offer a number of interesting characters — Louis, a somber boy who was seemingly doomed from birth, Gideon, who is presented as having an almost biblical force of will, and his show more wife, queenly, sexually magnetic Leah — they tend to get lost in the crowd. Reading this one reminded me of nothing so much as going through one of those fat, satisfying fantasy collections that are edited, inevitably, by Ellen Datlow. Which might be another way to say this book's plot could use some tightening up, no matter how good its writing is, or, while we're on the subject, how much fun it is to read.
"Bellefleur" succeeds at re-enchanting Oates's beloved upstate New York region, making it the home of impossibly high and cold peaks, fierce monsters, half-crazy holy men, encounters between barely contacted Indians and Europeans, and immense riches. I'll have to disagree with those who call this one an example of "magical realism": it has too much magic and not enough realism to qualify, and the Bellefleur family is, often enough, the driver of modernity and not its mere subjects. As for Patrick's claim that it incorporates gothic elements, well, I may have to take a pass, simply because my own knowledge of gothic literature is too limited.
Your own tolerance for "Bellefleur" will probably depend on a lot of things: your previous experience with Joyce Carol Oates, your predisposition for long, juicy, occasionally spooky yarns, and your feelings about literary maximalism in all of its forms. This might be a good novel to spend an otherwise boring winter with, although I can't say that I really enjoyed every minute I spent with it, or even a numerical majority of those. Still, I have to admit that nobody can do it quite like the Notorious JCO, still the spooky patron saint of American letters. show less
But is it any good? I'm not sure. It's certainly attention-getting and highly readable in places, but it goes on and on for a long, long time. Efficient it isn't. And while it does offer a number of interesting characters — Louis, a somber boy who was seemingly doomed from birth, Gideon, who is presented as having an almost biblical force of will, and his show more wife, queenly, sexually magnetic Leah — they tend to get lost in the crowd. Reading this one reminded me of nothing so much as going through one of those fat, satisfying fantasy collections that are edited, inevitably, by Ellen Datlow. Which might be another way to say this book's plot could use some tightening up, no matter how good its writing is, or, while we're on the subject, how much fun it is to read.
"Bellefleur" succeeds at re-enchanting Oates's beloved upstate New York region, making it the home of impossibly high and cold peaks, fierce monsters, half-crazy holy men, encounters between barely contacted Indians and Europeans, and immense riches. I'll have to disagree with those who call this one an example of "magical realism": it has too much magic and not enough realism to qualify, and the Bellefleur family is, often enough, the driver of modernity and not its mere subjects. As for Patrick's claim that it incorporates gothic elements, well, I may have to take a pass, simply because my own knowledge of gothic literature is too limited.
Your own tolerance for "Bellefleur" will probably depend on a lot of things: your previous experience with Joyce Carol Oates, your predisposition for long, juicy, occasionally spooky yarns, and your feelings about literary maximalism in all of its forms. This might be a good novel to spend an otherwise boring winter with, although I can't say that I really enjoyed every minute I spent with it, or even a numerical majority of those. Still, I have to admit that nobody can do it quite like the Notorious JCO, still the spooky patron saint of American letters. show less
I found this novel, above all, to be exuberant, ambitious, bold, and extremely readable. JCO has wrung all the suggestion and menace she could from her sumptuous setting. Not familiar with the author's infinite body of work - I have only stumbled across a few short stories, liked them, and never sought out any of the novels before recently - I was genuinely surprised. The structure of the novel may be disorienting for some, and the elevated style is extremely old fashioned, and includes the extensive use of parenthetical statements, as well as a dangerous number of adverbs. But as a historical novel, and one intended for entertainment, it is very effective. Plus, these "flaws" are mere stylistic choices, and I am sure the author has show more mastered any number of styles, judging by the variety of genres and modes she has dipped into during her Methuselah-esque career.
An artful storyteller, she quickly establishes the Gothic dimensions of her project, sets down roots in the territory of nightmare and the macabre, amplifies the atmosphere and aesthetic to be found in Hawthorne and Poe, and infuses the manor at the heart of the book with an astonishing level of detail, while managing to sustain a menacing tension throughout.
It culminates into a sprawling, violent, exuberant masterpiece of sorts. She might have chosen to focus on fewer characters, to tell a seamless, chronological tale, but she deviates, streaks wildly through time and dramatic scenes, only to twist her storytelling into contortions of the odd and grotesque. Some pieces of the resultant mosaic are elegant in excess, reverence-inducing, heart-stopping, guttural, and others are irreverent, almost silly, charming and straightforward accounts of character pratfalls and baboonery.
Dealing with 6 generations, all equally eccentric, of an impressively dysfunctional family, it is a chronicle, but not in the traditional sense. I knew I was in the hands of a gifted storyteller from the start, because I didn't care about the artful jumps through time, the skipping around, the seemingly random characters introduced and reintroduced at different stages. The whole thing was good, and of course, the pieces begin to fit together by and by. JCO is a literary giantess, and I will have to begin reading the rest of her oeuvre, over the inevitable decades it will take to do so, especially since she keeps adding on new, lengthy, breathless masterpieces year by year, as if she were writing them in her sleep. Someone, probably, will ghost-write her future novels via Ouija board. This is the first in a vast Gothic saga of historical monoliths, and a thrilling entry into her world. Any story including bears and haunting entities, malevolent cats and declining aristocracy is bound to be interesting. The characters must deal with acts of God, malingering psychic children, and worst of all, each other.
The novel is also pervaded by Biblical language and Biblical fear, trembling, uncertainty, and shadows in human shape sleepwalking through immense hallways, closed off rooms, and across the eternally frozen lake. These landscapes and interiors are no less dark and foreboding than the corridors of their minds.
Some sinister repeated refrains remind us of the fates of previous Bellefleurs echoing through the ages. With intellectual daring, the author explores the dark secrets, the bizarre aberrations, and the obscene lusts and fascinating horrors lurking in the well-to-do manor-dwellers' hearts. With an endless array of historical details, the interconnected web of stir-crazy, passionate humanity will stick with me. It's splendidly perverse in parts, particularly the supernatural deaths, which are morbid but somehow fitting
"The dark, chaotic, unfathomable pool of time," she mentions is of course, Lake Noir. The complex quilts woven by Mathilde symbolize the patchwork family and its incomprehensible disintegrations through time. Their family fortune does not make them immune to misfortune. The infidelity, the hatred, the pettiness, the irresponsible philandering! Those qualities propel them toward inevitably doomed ends.
Occasionally excessive, frenzied, ornate, or melodramatic, but usually mesmeric, rhythmic, and harrowing, I can't recommend the book enough. Its great moments of unexpected horror intrude, entice, and punctuate the well-conceived tragedies. At the very least, you will witness a huge range of character emotions and viewpoints.
My favorite chapter recounts Nightshade's solution to the Bellefleur rat infestation. It's an example of her humor in a dark, and provocative light. Vanity, dissolution, antisocial behavior, anxious, ignorant fear of outsiders, bloody vengeance, and any number of other distinctly human flaws present themselves throughout. For some of the 49 principles characters, their injuries define their behavior in unexpected ways. Wounds, both physical and psychological, contribute to their growth and descent.
JCO reminds us of the riches to be found in literature. Her opulent output, her boldness, her bravado, all reinforce her fiction's ability to move us. I know my image of the author will evolve as I delve deep into her novels, stories, journals and that notorious biography. All in good time. show less
An artful storyteller, she quickly establishes the Gothic dimensions of her project, sets down roots in the territory of nightmare and the macabre, amplifies the atmosphere and aesthetic to be found in Hawthorne and Poe, and infuses the manor at the heart of the book with an astonishing level of detail, while managing to sustain a menacing tension throughout.
It culminates into a sprawling, violent, exuberant masterpiece of sorts. She might have chosen to focus on fewer characters, to tell a seamless, chronological tale, but she deviates, streaks wildly through time and dramatic scenes, only to twist her storytelling into contortions of the odd and grotesque. Some pieces of the resultant mosaic are elegant in excess, reverence-inducing, heart-stopping, guttural, and others are irreverent, almost silly, charming and straightforward accounts of character pratfalls and baboonery.
Dealing with 6 generations, all equally eccentric, of an impressively dysfunctional family, it is a chronicle, but not in the traditional sense. I knew I was in the hands of a gifted storyteller from the start, because I didn't care about the artful jumps through time, the skipping around, the seemingly random characters introduced and reintroduced at different stages. The whole thing was good, and of course, the pieces begin to fit together by and by. JCO is a literary giantess, and I will have to begin reading the rest of her oeuvre, over the inevitable decades it will take to do so, especially since she keeps adding on new, lengthy, breathless masterpieces year by year, as if she were writing them in her sleep. Someone, probably, will ghost-write her future novels via Ouija board. This is the first in a vast Gothic saga of historical monoliths, and a thrilling entry into her world. Any story including bears and haunting entities, malevolent cats and declining aristocracy is bound to be interesting. The characters must deal with acts of God, malingering psychic children, and worst of all, each other.
The novel is also pervaded by Biblical language and Biblical fear, trembling, uncertainty, and shadows in human shape sleepwalking through immense hallways, closed off rooms, and across the eternally frozen lake. These landscapes and interiors are no less dark and foreboding than the corridors of their minds.
Some sinister repeated refrains remind us of the fates of previous Bellefleurs echoing through the ages. With intellectual daring, the author explores the dark secrets, the bizarre aberrations, and the obscene lusts and fascinating horrors lurking in the well-to-do manor-dwellers' hearts. With an endless array of historical details, the interconnected web of stir-crazy, passionate humanity will stick with me. It's splendidly perverse in parts, particularly the supernatural deaths, which are morbid but somehow fitting
"The dark, chaotic, unfathomable pool of time," she mentions is of course, Lake Noir. The complex quilts woven by Mathilde symbolize the patchwork family and its incomprehensible disintegrations through time. Their family fortune does not make them immune to misfortune. The infidelity, the hatred, the pettiness, the irresponsible philandering! Those qualities propel them toward inevitably doomed ends.
Occasionally excessive, frenzied, ornate, or melodramatic, but usually mesmeric, rhythmic, and harrowing, I can't recommend the book enough. Its great moments of unexpected horror intrude, entice, and punctuate the well-conceived tragedies. At the very least, you will witness a huge range of character emotions and viewpoints.
My favorite chapter recounts Nightshade's solution to the Bellefleur rat infestation. It's an example of her humor in a dark, and provocative light. Vanity, dissolution, antisocial behavior, anxious, ignorant fear of outsiders, bloody vengeance, and any number of other distinctly human flaws present themselves throughout. For some of the 49 principles characters, their injuries define their behavior in unexpected ways. Wounds, both physical and psychological, contribute to their growth and descent.
JCO reminds us of the riches to be found in literature. Her opulent output, her boldness, her bravado, all reinforce her fiction's ability to move us. I know my image of the author will evolve as I delve deep into her novels, stories, journals and that notorious biography. All in good time. show less
Oates is a modern master of the Gothic novel, and this sprawling, wondrous book really showcases her command of language and how she can push her prose right to the edge of satire while still keeping that Gothic intensity. My only minor complaint is that it's a bit long and meandering in parts, but in truth I really enjoyed it. To give you a flavor of the book, here's the magnificently over-the-top opening sentence:
"It was many years ago in that dark, chaotic, unfathomable pool of time before Germaine's birth (nearly twelve months before her birth), on a night in late September stirred by innumerable frenzied winds, like spirits contending with one another--now plaintively, now angrily, now with a subtle cellolike delicacy capable of show more making the flesh rise on one's arms and neck--a night so sulfurous, so restless, so swollen with inarticulate longing that Leah and Gideon Bellefleur in their enormous bed quarreled once again, brought to tears because their love was too ravenous to be contained by their mere mortal bodies; and their groping, careless, anguished words were like strips of raw silk rubbed violently together (for each was convinced that the other did not, could not, be equal to his love--Leah doubted that any man was capable of a love so profound it could lie silent, like a forest pond; Gideon doubted that any woman was capable of comprehending the nature of a man's passion, which might tear through him, rendering him broken and exhausted, as vulnerable as a small child): it was on this tumultuous rainlashed night that Mahalaleel came to Bellefleur Manor on the western shore of the great Lake Noir, where he was to stay for nearly five years." show less
"It was many years ago in that dark, chaotic, unfathomable pool of time before Germaine's birth (nearly twelve months before her birth), on a night in late September stirred by innumerable frenzied winds, like spirits contending with one another--now plaintively, now angrily, now with a subtle cellolike delicacy capable of show more making the flesh rise on one's arms and neck--a night so sulfurous, so restless, so swollen with inarticulate longing that Leah and Gideon Bellefleur in their enormous bed quarreled once again, brought to tears because their love was too ravenous to be contained by their mere mortal bodies; and their groping, careless, anguished words were like strips of raw silk rubbed violently together (for each was convinced that the other did not, could not, be equal to his love--Leah doubted that any man was capable of a love so profound it could lie silent, like a forest pond; Gideon doubted that any woman was capable of comprehending the nature of a man's passion, which might tear through him, rendering him broken and exhausted, as vulnerable as a small child): it was on this tumultuous rainlashed night that Mahalaleel came to Bellefleur Manor on the western shore of the great Lake Noir, where he was to stay for nearly five years." show less
Bellefleur by Joyce Carol Oates is ranked as one of my most favorite novels of all time; I savored this gothic tale cover to cover and didn't want it to end. It possesses a life of it's own, the characters became ghosts that would haunt me after setting it aside after a short reading and I would look forward to picking it up again. After I finished it, I felt homesick in a peculiar way that no book has ever done to me before; it is very likely that I will revisit the pages of Bellefleur again. Each chapter is an opulent sliver of time that peers into the lives and thoughts of the residents of Bellefleur Manor, an American family of notorious distinction. Their history is rife with joys and sorrows deftly exposed by the astounding craft show more that is signature in JCO's prolific literary career. The mesmerizing shifts of time, like historical memories, travel from the heights of the imposing Mount Blanc, wind through the decadent rooms of Bellefleur Manor, and plunge into the depths of mysterious Lake Noir where disconcerting spirits dwell. The fanciful characters endear themselves because of their human vitality and cause despair because of their human flaws; they are very tangible and seductive in spite of the brief glimpses into their lives. This is not a book for the faint of heart for it isn't a serene walk in the walled garden of Bellefleur Manor. JCO reveals the grotesque that exists within the soul of the American dream, and with abrupt grace she divulges the unforeseen twists of fate that arise with incredible violence that will leave you reeling with astonishment. It is a unique and contemplative tale, not to be consumed in a few sittings; however, the temptation of the eloquent prose begs to be gorged until the reader is sated. Open this book and open your mind, and give your imagination a workout. If you read this book with a rigid, black and white mind-set you will come away frustrated by it. I highly recommend this novel to anyone who is looking for something out of the ordinary to read. show less
[Bellefleur] by [[Joyce Carol Oates]] was a sprawling, rambling, endlessly digressive Gothic saga about multiple generations of family in upstate New York, timeframe squishy (a bit more on that later), living together (for the most part) in an often surreal castle. There is a loose forward-moving narrative that tells the story of how one estranged member of the family comes to dominate it by marrying her cousin and embarking on a crusade to rebuild the family's lost glory, but this isn't really a book "about" that. It's really more like a huge collection of short stories about a single family. Each chapter is about a different member of the family or incident in their history, jumping around through space and time.
Weirdness abounded in show more this book, with elements of what I guess would be called Gothic-tinged magical realism? Mysterious weather events; a mythical-seeming pregnancy resulting in a deformed child whose semi attached twin is simply lopped off at home like its no big deal; enchanted mirrors; people disappearing in strange rooms, ponds; an abundance of runaways and foundlings; ghosts, shapeshifters, possible vampires, giant mythical beasts rumored to carry off children.
While there is an elaborately constructed family tree in the front of the book, one gets the sense that this is a bit of a joke, as only a few of the individuals present have dates associated with their names & these names are often re-used in later generations. Additionally, there is a weird sense that all of the characters are existing at the same time, either because they are physically present or because stories and myths about them permeate the lives of the current generation. Such as the founder of the dynasty and builder of the castle, who upon his death demanded that his skin be stretched over a civil war era drum and that the drum be beaten to announce mealtimes and the arrival of guests. Or the fact that the Bellefleur dead are said to live underneath the waters of a pond on the grounds.
Ultimately I didn't love this book, which was often just a little too aimless and digressing, but it is definitely one that I will remember. show less
Weirdness abounded in show more this book, with elements of what I guess would be called Gothic-tinged magical realism? Mysterious weather events; a mythical-seeming pregnancy resulting in a deformed child whose semi attached twin is simply lopped off at home like its no big deal; enchanted mirrors; people disappearing in strange rooms, ponds; an abundance of runaways and foundlings; ghosts, shapeshifters, possible vampires, giant mythical beasts rumored to carry off children.
While there is an elaborately constructed family tree in the front of the book, one gets the sense that this is a bit of a joke, as only a few of the individuals present have dates associated with their names & these names are often re-used in later generations. Additionally, there is a weird sense that all of the characters are existing at the same time, either because they are physically present or because stories and myths about them permeate the lives of the current generation. Such as the founder of the dynasty and builder of the castle, who upon his death demanded that his skin be stretched over a civil war era drum and that the drum be beaten to announce mealtimes and the arrival of guests. Or the fact that the Bellefleur dead are said to live underneath the waters of a pond on the grounds.
Ultimately I didn't love this book, which was often just a little too aimless and digressing, but it is definitely one that I will remember. show less
For those who don’t remember the 70s, or weren’t alive for them, the middle of the decade was filled with preparations for the 200th anniversary celebrations commemorating the signing of the Declaration of Independence. In the atmosphere surrounding this, there was a seemingly insatiable appetite for famly saga stories and their various television adaptations. There was also a parallel surge of interest in geneaology.
To give you some examples:
[The Kent Family Chronicles] (8 book series) by John Jakes, (first book published in 1974) were written specifically to commemorate the bicentennial. [Roots] by Alex Haley was published in1976; and the telelvision mini-series followed in 1977. These books were BIG bestsellers, and it show more certainly seemed that everyone was reading them! (including me).
Howard Fast’s [The Immigrants] was published in 1977 (beginning a 6 book family saga). Television mini-series of other family sagas of the era included: Mann’s Buddenbrooks, 1979; and Steinbeck’s East of Eden, 1979. And yes, we were all reading those books too.
So, with all this national pride, celebration, and interest in family sagas, is it any surprise that Joyce Carol Oates might reflect upon our nation's first 200 years, and the whole family saga thing, and pick up her pen in 1978 (perhaps, with tongue firmly planted in cheek) to begin writing her own contribution?
[Bellefleur] is a sweeping Gothic tale, a satirical family saga which spans several hundred years. It is set in upstate New York near the Canadian border (similar to the Adirondack area where Lake Placid* is located). In the book’s first few pages there is a large family tree diagram, and after seeing it, one might approach the novel with some trepidation. The story is rooted in the ‘current’ generation (mostly the early 20th century) and from there it moves back and forth across the generations in a non-linear, willy-nilly manner. I found myself flipping back to the family tree often until I realized that “order” in the tree truly doesn’t matter to the story.
Bellefleur Manor and the family are seemingly inseparable. It’s a castle to some, a prison to others. And what a parade of inhabitants! The Bellefleurs are a family of eccentrics, maybe something like what would result of cross-breeding between the Kennedys and the Addams Family. There are murderers, millionaires, religious nuts, poets and prodigies. For example, the legacy of Raphael Bellefleur was that after death a Calvary drum be made with his treated and stretched skin and played to announce meals, guests arrivals...etc.! Leah Pym Bellefleur (before she was actually a Bellefleur) creepily had a large pet spider named Love. Young Samuel Bellefleur disappears into a mirror in the Turquoise Room with some escaped slaves and is never seen again. One can see why the youngest generation sees the crumbling manor as a prison and longs to escape ...
Told in a somewhat elevated voice which gives the story a sweeping or epic tone, the tale of the Bellefleurs is at once riveting, often almost comic, and more or less exhausting. According to her diaries, Oates was quite obsessed in her writing of it, and the book does have an obsessive feel. The amount of detail in it is astounding. I did not read it straight through but chose to take breaks to read other books.
There are fantasy elements in the story, the first I have come across any in of Oates’ works. They are beautifully executed and integrated into the story, and used in a symbolic way. I remember finishing one chapter and thought, ‘what just happened there? Was he a vampire?” (the reading equivalent of rubbing your eyes and looking at something again because you can’t believe what you have seen).
I know I’m not being terrible cohesive here, but the book is so wonderfully congested and there so much one could say, and so many angles one could look at it from.. Even as I spread the reading of this novel across months, it was a terrific read, one that I will read again. It will not be my favorite Oates’ work, but it’s up there.
*Ok, maybe not the Kennedys
**And to the family saga list, for fun, let’s add John Crowley’s [Little, Big] (1981)
***An interesting tidbit: although Oates sets many of her books in this region, the Adirondacks were preparing for the 1980 Olympics while she was writing this book...
***Considering all the family saga books I did read in the 70s, it's a wonder I did not read [Bellefleur] in 1980, but my reading shifted at the end of '79 when I had my first child. show less
To give you some examples:
[The Kent Family Chronicles] (8 book series) by John Jakes, (first book published in 1974) were written specifically to commemorate the bicentennial. [Roots] by Alex Haley was published in1976; and the telelvision mini-series followed in 1977. These books were BIG bestsellers, and it show more certainly seemed that everyone was reading them! (including me).
Howard Fast’s [The Immigrants] was published in 1977 (beginning a 6 book family saga). Television mini-series of other family sagas of the era included: Mann’s Buddenbrooks, 1979; and Steinbeck’s East of Eden, 1979. And yes, we were all reading those books too.
So, with all this national pride, celebration, and interest in family sagas, is it any surprise that Joyce Carol Oates might reflect upon our nation's first 200 years, and the whole family saga thing, and pick up her pen in 1978 (perhaps, with tongue firmly planted in cheek) to begin writing her own contribution?
[Bellefleur] is a sweeping Gothic tale, a satirical family saga which spans several hundred years. It is set in upstate New York near the Canadian border (similar to the Adirondack area where Lake Placid* is located). In the book’s first few pages there is a large family tree diagram, and after seeing it, one might approach the novel with some trepidation. The story is rooted in the ‘current’ generation (mostly the early 20th century) and from there it moves back and forth across the generations in a non-linear, willy-nilly manner. I found myself flipping back to the family tree often until I realized that “order” in the tree truly doesn’t matter to the story.
Bellefleur Manor and the family are seemingly inseparable. It’s a castle to some, a prison to others. And what a parade of inhabitants! The Bellefleurs are a family of eccentrics, maybe something like what would result of cross-breeding between the Kennedys and the Addams Family. There are murderers, millionaires, religious nuts, poets and prodigies. For example, the legacy of Raphael Bellefleur was that after death a Calvary drum be made with his treated and stretched skin and played to announce meals, guests arrivals...etc.! Leah Pym Bellefleur (before she was actually a Bellefleur) creepily had a large pet spider named Love. Young Samuel Bellefleur disappears into a mirror in the Turquoise Room with some escaped slaves and is never seen again. One can see why the youngest generation sees the crumbling manor as a prison and longs to escape ...
Told in a somewhat elevated voice which gives the story a sweeping or epic tone, the tale of the Bellefleurs is at once riveting, often almost comic, and more or less exhausting. According to her diaries, Oates was quite obsessed in her writing of it, and the book does have an obsessive feel. The amount of detail in it is astounding. I did not read it straight through but chose to take breaks to read other books.
There are fantasy elements in the story, the first I have come across any in of Oates’ works. They are beautifully executed and integrated into the story, and used in a symbolic way. I remember finishing one chapter and thought, ‘what just happened there? Was he a vampire?” (the reading equivalent of rubbing your eyes and looking at something again because you can’t believe what you have seen).
I know I’m not being terrible cohesive here, but the book is so wonderfully congested and there so much one could say, and so many angles one could look at it from.. Even as I spread the reading of this novel across months, it was a terrific read, one that I will read again. It will not be my favorite Oates’ work, but it’s up there.
*Ok, maybe not the Kennedys
**And to the family saga list, for fun, let’s add John Crowley’s [Little, Big] (1981)
***An interesting tidbit: although Oates sets many of her books in this region, the Adirondacks were preparing for the 1980 Olympics while she was writing this book...
***Considering all the family saga books I did read in the 70s, it's a wonder I did not read [Bellefleur] in 1980, but my reading shifted at the end of '79 when I had my first child. show less
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GROUP READ: Bellefleur (June - August 2011) in Fans of Joyce Carol Oates (January 2012)
Author Information
476+ Works 62,326 Members
Joyce Carol Oates was born on June 16, 1938 in Lockport, New York. She received a bachelor's degree in English from Syracuse University and a master's degree in English from the University of Wisconsin. She is the author of numerous novels and collections of short stories. Her works include We Were the Mulvaneys, Blonde, Bellefleur, You Must show more Remember This, Because It Is Bitter, Because It Is My Heart, Solstice, Marya : A Life, and Give Me Your Heart. She has received numerous awards including the National Book Award for Them, the PEN/Malamud Award for Excellence in Short Fiction, and the F. Scott Fitzgerald Award for Lifetime Achievement in American Literature. She was a finalist for the 2015 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction with her title Lovely, Dark, Deep. She also wrote a series of suspense novels under the pseudonym Rosamond Smith. In 2015, her novel The Accursed became listed as a bestseller on the iBooks chart. She worked as a professor of English at the University of Windsor, before becoming the Roger S. Berlind Distinguished Professor of Humanities at Princeton University. She and her late husband Raymond J. Smith operated a small press and published a literary magazine, The Ontario Review. (Bowker Author Biography) Joyce Carol Oates is one of the most eminent and prolific literary figures and social critics of our times. She has won the National Book Award and several O. Henry and Pushcart prizes. Among her other awards are an NEA grant, a Guggenheim fellowship, the PEN/Malamud Lifetime Achievement Award, and the F. Scott Fitzgerald Award for Lifetime Achievement in American Literature. (Publisher Provided) show less
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Common Knowledge
- Canonical title*
- Bellefleur : sukuromaani
- Original title
- Bellefleur
- Original publication date
- 1980
- Important places
- Upstate New York
- Epigraph
- Time is a child playing a game of draughts; the kingship is in the hands of a child. --Heraclitus
- Dedication
- In memory of Henry Robbins (1927-1979)
- First words
- It was many years ago in that dark, chaotic, unfathomable pool of time before Germaine's birth (nearly twelve months before her birth), on a night in late September stirred by innumerable frenzied winds, like spirits contendi... (show all)ng with one another - now plaintively, now angrily, now with a subtle cellolike delicacy capable of making the flesh rise on one's arms and neck - a night so sulfurous, so restless, so swollen with inarticulate longing that Leah and Gideon Bellefleur in their enormous bed quarreled once again, brought to tears because their love was too ravenous to be contained by their mere mortal bodies; and their groping, careless, anguished words were like strips or raw silk rubbed violently together (for each was convince the other did not, could not, be equal to his love - Leah doubted that any man was capable of a love so profound it could be silent, like a forest pond; Gideon doubted that any woman was capable of comprehending the nature of a man's passion, which might tear through him, rendering him broken and exhausted, as vulnerable as a smalll child): it was on this tumultuous rain-lashed night that Mahalaleel came to Bellefleur Manor on the western shore of the great Lake Noir, where he was to stay for nearly five years.
- Last words
- (Click to show. Warning: May contain spoilers.)I don't know what to believe, Jedediah cried aloud, clutching the glove in his hand.
- Canonical DDC/MDS
- 813.54
- Canonical LCC
- PS3565.A8
*Some information comes from Common Knowledge in other languages. Click "Edit" for more information.
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